3 billion year old meteorite crater found near Maniitsoq, West Greenland

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120628164658.htm

http://maps.google.de/maps?q=65%C2%B015%E2%80%B2+N,+51%C2%B050%E2%80%B2+W&hl=de&ie=UTF8&ll=65.199164,-51.394043&spn=1.730615,3.845215&sll=65.257497,-51.836586&sspn=0.053957,0.120163&t=m&z=8

Adam A. Garde, Iain McDonald, Brendan Dyck, Nynke Keulen. Searching for giant, 
ancient impact structures on Earth: The Mesoarchaean Maniitsoq structure, West 
Greenland. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2012; 337-338: 197 DOI

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12001938

"  Abstract

A 100 km-scale, circular region in the Archaean North Atlantic Craton centred 
at 65°15′N, 51°50′W near Maniitsoq town in West Greenland comprises a set of 
highly unusual geological features that were created during a single event 
involving intense crushing and heating and are incompatible with crustal 
orogenic processes. The presently exposed features of the Maniitsoq structure 
were buried 20–25 km below the surface when this event occurred at c. 3 Ga, 
during waning convergent orogeny. These features include: a large aeromagnetic 
anomaly; a central 35×50 km2 large area of comminuted quartzo-feldspathic 
material; regional-scale circular deformation; widespread random fractures with 
featherlike textures; intense fracture cleavage; amphibolite–granite-matrix 
breccias unrelated to faulting or intrusions; formation and common fluidisation 
of microbreccias; abundant evidence of direct K-feldspar and plagioclase 
melting superimposed on already migmatised rocks; deformation of quartz by <c> 
slip; formation of planar elements in quartz and plagioclase; and, emplacement 
of crustally contaminated ultramafic intrusions and regional scale hydrothermal 
alteration under amphibolite-facies conditions. The diagnostic tools employed 
to identify impacting in the upper crust are inadequate for structures 
preserved deep within the continental crust. Nevertheless, the inferred scale, 
strain rates and temperatures necessary to create the Maniitsoq structure rule 
out a terrestrial origin of the structure.  "

Martin
 


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